Mountain View, Calif. Triscend Corporation, the leading provider of Configurable System-on-Chip (CSoC) devices, today announced price reductions by as much as 27% for the 8051-based E5 CSoC family, bringing some devices below $4.00. The new pricing reflects costs savings from higher production volumes and increased manufacturing efficiencies, and it is effective for orders shipping in 2002.

"The design-in activity for our E5 family is accelerating sharply. We are seeing a 47% quarter-to-quarter growth in the number of customers with complete E5 designs, resulting in more than a hundred E5-based products by the end of the second quarter this year," said Geir Kjosavik, Product Marketing Manager with Triscend Corporation. "As Triscend enters the third year of shipping E5 devices, the increase in demand combined with lower manufacturing overhead allow us to reduce the cost of CSoC technology and thus capture a significant portion of a projected $10 billion 8-bit microcontroller market. We expect to continue with aggressive cost reductions, achieving sub-$3.00 pricing as early as first half of 2004."

The E5, the world's first CSoC family, consists of four devices. All devices feature a performance-accelerated 8051 microcontroller core - capable of running 10 MIPS at 40MHz, Configurable System Logic (CSL) - Triscend's programmable logic fabric, a memory sub-system, and a high performance system bus. E5 devices are also hardwired with a wealth of microcontroller peripherals, such as DMA controllers, a JTAG emulation interface, UARTs, and timers/watchdog. More information on the E5 family and a block diagram can be found at http://www.triscend.com/products/indexE5.html.

Using the companion FastChip software, designers can add any number or combination of peripherals to create 8051 derivatives on demand. More than 50 free IP modules, such as logic functions, display drivers, interface modules, and serial communications functions are included in the FastChip IP library, and they can be integrated into the Configurable System Logic via a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. Additional information on FastChip can be found at http://www.triscend.com/products/indexfcintro.html. A complete list of currently available IP modules in the FastChip library can be found at http://www.triscend.com/products/indexfc_ip.html.

Platforms and Availability

High volume pricing is effective for direct orders of 100,000-unit or more quantities and shipping in 2002. All devices in the E5 family are currently in volume production. FastChip software is priced at $99 for a full license; free evaluation versions of FastChip are also available. Triscend also offers the E5 Starter Kit, which includes the E5 evaluation board with the TE520, a JTAG debug/download cable, and a fully licensed FastChip CD-ROM, for $795. Triscend's products are sold through worldwide distribution partners; see http://www.triscend.com/sales/ind...ntact.html for contact details.

About Triscend

Triscend Corporation is the leading provider of Configurable System-on-Chip (CSoC) devices - a single-chip combination of a dedicated industry-standard microprocessor, embedded programmable logic, a dedicated system bus, and memory.
Triscend CSoC devices, along with the FastChip Software Development System, fill the gap between fully custom system-on-chips and application specific standard products, providing the next level of integration, time-to-market and programmability. Founded in 1997, Triscend is privately held and venture capital funded and is headquartered in Mountain View, CA. More information on Triscend is available at http://www.triscend.com or by calling (650) 968-8668.

FastChip is a registered trademark of Triscend Corporation. Triscend, E5, and the Triscend logo are trademarks of Triscend Corporation. All other products and brands are the property of their respective holders.